The Relationship Was Toast from the Beginning

Image via WikipediaNot that I realized this.

See, I'm a breakfast-y person.  I have been since back in the day on the pill, I had to take my pill and vitamins with food, otherwise they made me nauseated.  I had an irregular work schedule, so my lunch and dinner were always at different times, but I could always have breakfast before work.  Might just be a bagel and some orange juice, or a bowl of cereal, but I always eat something in the morning.

Later, when I would spend the night at (an early)  boyfriend's place, if I/we had work we'd get up early and make love, then he'd treat me to IHOP.  If we didn't have work he'd make us breakfast, then we'd go back to bed and make love some more.

With a brief break for the child-rearing years, I became addicted to the whole cycle of lovemaking/breakfast/more lovemaking.  Perhaps lingering in bed or on the couch, watching old movies and cuddling, long past noon.  All of my lovers enjoyed it too, until...

At first, when I began seeing OCPD ex, we would make love first thing in the morning - but he was still caring for his aged father, so he would have to get up, go bathe and feed him.  Later, he was still set in that routine of get up and get the day started.  We might make love (morning wood), we might even linger in bed for an hour or two on a Sunday morning watching TV, but he was not a breakfast-y person.

Not knowing about OCPD, I thought it would just be a matter of time to coax him into such a fun, sensual experience on the weekends.  Memories of loveplay in the kitchen, kissing and caresses and feeding one another tidbits while making omelettes or blueberry muffins...  Forget about it.  One person in the kitchen at a time.  He had no interest in sharing the kitchen with me if I was cooking, and it was a federal offense if he was cooking and I came in, playfully grabbed his butt or kissed him.

A lot of times he claimed queasiness in the morning, that if he ate anything he would get sick.  (Since he self-medicated his anxiety with copious amounts of alcohol, can you say hangover, boys & girls?)  Most of the time, if I wanted a weekend cooked breakfast, I ate alone.  Sometimes he would allow me to fix a weekend breakfast for him, too, but we always ate at the table, never in bed or at the couch.   No loveplay during food preparation, at the table, or afterwards.

I missed a lot of things I'd come to believe were a normal part of a love relationship, but this one was a biggie for me.

And frequently, even when he "allowed" me to make him breakfasts, he found fault with them anyway.  The eggs were over or underdone.  Or cold (which often happened because he would delay coming to the table).  I prepared too much food.  Once I made scrambled eggs with bits of bacon crumbled into them.  Though he'd never told me, I should have known he didn't like bacon, ever, in any form.

He didn't even like the way I buttered his toast.  Generously, with the butter extending all the way to the edges of the toast.  That meant he got icky butter on his fingers, so unpleasant!  I began, on breakfast mornings, to simply put out the butter dish and a knife, slap the dry toast on his plate, and let him butter his own damn toast.  That way, he could leave the edges dry the way he liked them.

Although I am not yet ready to take a new lover, I am back to enjoying breakfasts again.  Quickies during the week; on the weekends, perhaps a big eggwhite scramble with broccoli, cheese and tomato.  I don't have to buy the bread he preferred, but can experiment: double fiber, whole wheat, potato bread...   Sometimes I even put jam on my toast!
Image via Wikipedia

This morning, a work day, I had a decadent two slices of Cinnabon toast (cinnamon gave him heartburn, he said) with butter (Smart Start butter substitute) spread all the way to the edge, so that each bite was equally flavorful.

I enjoyed it, but it makes me wonder...  It's been a year and a half since I moved out.  When will I stop remembering and reacting to that relationship, every time I butter my damn toast?  I enjoyed it, I am grateful to be able to do it the way I want without criticism or disgusted looks, but shouldn't I be over emotionally reacting by now?

Or is this a good thing, part of mindful eating?  I don't feel I am there yet, I think the hurt/trauma is still taking up a bit too much real estate in my mind.

What do you think?  Should I be over this by now?  Do you have hurts/traumas that are taking you longer to get over than you think they should?


As always, I love and appreciate your feedback.

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 6 - Too Guarded

Castillo Turegano via Wikimedia
Theoretically, the door will open eventually.
Or the walls will crumble of old age.

This post continues with Too Guarded from Chapter Six.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

Too Guarded

It shouldn't be surprising that many obsessives tend to be too "guarded."  If nothing else, obsessives are alert to everything that might go wrong in life.  Unconsciously they yearn to protect themselves against all potential risk - an understandable desire.  But, more than other people, obsessives seem blind to the costs of too much "protection."  And there are always costs.

Some degree of frugality is laudable, for example, but guarding your money also costs the time and energy wasted in comparison-shopping for even small items.  It costs the pleasures forgone because they're "too frivolous," the generosity unexpressed because you "can't afford" to share.

Similarly, self-reliance is a good trait.  But some obsessives are so uncomfortable with the idea of being dependent on anyone else that they guard their autonomy too fiercely.  They may be unable to delegate work, for example, and must then spend the time and effort doing what someone else could do adequately.  

Even more pernicious are the consequences of being overly guarded emotionally.  This tendency can make it almost impossible to have mutually satisfying relationships.  The need to hold yourself back from others can make you feel chronically constrained and tense; even worse, you may come to feel alone in the universe, unconnected, a stranger almost everywhere you go.  The sense that no one truly knows you, or cares about you, is a sad and painful burden.

***

Because  he couldn't trust me, couldn't open up with me, my ex was like one big festering wound of distorted thoughts, suspicions, and poisons.  It wasn't until after we'd been living together nearly three years he confessed he was certain when I went to get my hair done that I was hooking up with an ex-boyfriend, because no way a hairdresser would open up for an 8:00 am appointment.  (I did usually brunch with a girlfriend afterwards, which he knew - occasionally I even put her on the phone to say hi to him.)

Sometimes I wonder, if he'd trusted me with his fears right from my first hair appointment, if things would have been different.  Lancing the wound to let all the poison out.

But of course, he didn't trust me with anything.  He couldn't share chores, because I might do small thing differently.  By the end, I was living with an angry, surly stranger.  He did occasionally have times when he would tell me he loved me, would make love to me with his body.  But he would never share his deeper thoughts or feelings, and did everything he could to keep me from sharing mine.

When he cried, he wouldn't even let me put my arms around him to offer comfort.  When you get rejected, over and over and over again, you eventually stop trying to storm that castle.  There's a song a friend of mine wrote, "(In My) Trembling Hands," about a woman, not young, not unscarred by life, shakily offering herself, soul and heart, to a new love.  It perfectly encapsulates how I felt.  "I'm a gift for you," goes the chorus.

But he would have had to open the door to accept that gift.  And I might have been a Trojan horse.  So, he stayed inside, bitter and barricaded, and finally, I decided that the gift of my love was too precious to keep offering to someone who would never be brave enough to open the door.  He chose fear over love.

They say it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all, and that's absolutely true.  I think he loved me despite his best efforts to protect himself, but because he stayed too guarded, afraid to love and lose, he lost me anyway.

Please don't make that mistake.

Addicted to Love? A Valentine for the Other Single Folks

This Valentines' weekend, though I know I should not should not should NOT contact my ex b-f right now, when I'm feeling vulnerable, and yes, struggling a bit with being alone in a world seemingly full of lovers, I am pondering how I ever got so mixed up about A Crazy Little Thing Called Love.  I've come to the conclusion that I can blame much of it on all the crazy little songs about love.


Listen to popular music.  I mean, really listen.  To the lyrics we often sing along to, without paying attention, but which sink deep down into our subconscious, and confuse the issue when we try to actually have a relationship.

 A lot of them aren't about love at all, of course, but about sex.  Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love?




From Sura Nualpradid at
FreeDigitalImages



Your heart sweats, your body shakes
Another kiss is what it takes

You can't sleep, you can't eat
There's no doubt, you're in deep
Your throat is tight, you can't breathe
Another kiss is all you need

Songs tell us (Love is Like A) Heatwave, or brings Fever (when you kiss me, fever when you hold me tight...)  Don't these all make it sound like another side effect of "love" calls for a major dose of penicillin and a formal notice from the Center for Disease Control to all one's previous partners?

This one was a favorite...  and then I paid better attention to the lyrics.

Now that we've grown up it seems
You just keep ignoring me.
I'll find you anywhere you go,
I'll follow you high and low.
You can't escape this love of mine anytime.
Well, I'll sneak up behind you,
Be careful where I find you.
Apple peaches pumpkin pie,
Soon your love will be all mine.
Then I'm gonna take you home,
Marry you so you won't roam.

This sweet, bubbly little ditty is about finding one's childhood love, and whether she's now interested in a love relationship or not, stalking her until she gives in, and then trapping her via marriage.  Ain't that just sooo cute!  Not!  Then there's the stalker's classic, The Police's Every Breath You Take which is really, really creepy if you sit down and listen to it.

Come on, What's Love Got To Do with that?

But there are plenty of songs about people in healthy relationships... aren't there? 

I know you wanna leave me,
but I refuse to let you go
If I have to beg and plead for your sympathy,
I don't mind coz' you mean that much to me
Ain't too proud to beg, sweet darlin
Please don't leave me girl, don't you go
Ain't to proud to plead, baby, baby
Please don't leave me, girl, don't you go

Okay, we've got some serious self-esteem and boundary issues going on in the Temptations' Ain't Too Proud to Beg, but...  yeeeah.  How many, many songs and movies, teach us that if we simply hang in there, patiently dogging the object of our affections, s/he will eventually become exhausted fending us off, give in, and love us back?

From CakeWrecks - "for the Co-dependent"
"When your boyfriend starts crying, you'll know it's only because
he's so happy."

Modern stuff isn't that bad, right?  Those were the Dark Ages, romantically speaking; since then men and women have learned to treat each other better!  How about some Matchbox 20?

I wanna push you around, well I will, I will
I wanna push you down, well I will, I will
I wanna take you for granted, I wanna take you for granted
Well I will

Next! 

For those who loved an OCPDr (aka, a control freak) Linkin Park's Numb pretty much tells the tale of how exhausting it feels to be pressured by someone you love to be "what you want me to be," to be constantly criticized for making mistakes:

I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless lost under the surface
Don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)

I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

Can't you see that you're smothering me
Holding too tightly afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
And every second I waste is more than I can take

Like some people use prayer to tell God what He should be doing (the Slacker!) there are many angry songs lecturing the other party on exactly how he or she totally screwed things up.  Take the whining about the house being dark and pots being cold in Santana's Evil Ways, because the woman actually has friends and outside interests, instead of being chained to the stove, cooking dinner for her man.  The nerve!  (I love that song, actually, great guitar solo; I've simply rewritten the lyrics in my head so when I hear it I'm less tempted to strangle the nearest male with my suddenly superfluous bra strap.)

There are very few songs about a mature, healthy love relationship.  I've never heard a song celebrating that messy front row seat, watching one's wife push a baby's ginormous head out of her vagina.  Probably because the fathers are a) passed out cold; b) manfully suppressing the urge to hurl chunks, or c) thanking God on their knees they will never, ever have to do this themselves.  In any event, the thought of whipping out a guitar and working out some chords  right then - not happening.   

The nitty gritty of everyday life and familiarity with one's partner, for the most part, gets left out of love songs.  Female songwriters don't write about the way their hubby of umpteen years gets more proficient at the butt trumpet every day.

from The Eight Phases of Dating from The Oatmeal

Although there is Brad Paisley's generous offer to check his girlfriend for Ticks.  Now there's romance for ya!

Love songs are mostly yearning songs (because the not-yet-well-known object of one's affection is still pure, perfect, and embodies everything one could ever hope to find,) or "player" songs, or we've-broken-up-but-I-still-miss-you, even if I am out partying and hitting on other women, like Smokey Robinson's The Tracks of My Tears.  Or bitter, don't-let-the-doorknob-hit-you-in-the-ass-on-your-way-out break-up songs (my current personal favorites) like Fleetwood Mac's Go Your Own Way, or Dokken's Just Walk Away

I'm not saying loving relationships aren't out there - and beautiful songs about them.

This is what love should be about, IMO.  Perfect love casts out fear.  Love makes you stronger, more confident.  Makes you feel alive and aware of the environment around you, like the children playing outside (though I still think the children in masks theme was a bit weird.)   Love makes you feel more connected, not just to your lover, but to yourself, to Heaven and the Divine, to joy.  Whatever happened in her life after this, during this time Belinda radiated joy.  I felt like I could almost scoop it off her in cupfuls.

from Karen's Whimsy

This, of course, is the bait, the reason we all get lured in, the glorious way we feel upon falling in love.  Just because in most cases, it dims a bit, or even vanishes altogether, doesn't mean it wasn't real and amazing while it lasted.  (Sorry, I tried being cynical - at heart I'm a sappy romantic after all!)

I did fall in love with my exb-f, and I did feel like this, in the beginning.  I'm truly sorry it didn't last, sorry that his OCPD, Mr. Hyde-ish behaviors emerged with such a vengeance that in the end, I felt more Numb.  I'm not foolish enough to go back, in the vain hope that this time, the story will have a different ending.

But I don't regret having those feelings, not for a moment, and I look forward, someday, to feeling them again with somebody who does not have a mental disorder.  And in the meantime... I'll just have to be good to my girlfriend.

Have you ever felt confused by the messages about
dysfunctional love in pop music?

What's your favorite love (or break-up) song?